This Is The End Of The World
by Spoggly
Summary: Owen didn't leave the Hub in "Exit Wounds," and there were consequences.  Spoilers through "Exit Wounds."


The Hub was sealed when the nuclear reactor exploded - Tosh had gone to stop it while Owen had stayed behind, trying to figure out a way to recall the Weevils hunting the streets of Cardiff.

The end of their world was a bang, not a whimper. Owen couldn't be spared from helping control the Weevils, not to mention he was rubbish with computers, so Tosh had gone to try and shut the nuclear reactor down. The city was still burning around them when Jack reappeared in the Hub, neutralizing his brother with tears and chloroform. Jack had just gotten them out into the main Hub when they heard Tosh screaming to lock down - and then the screen flared white and went blank.

* * *

They had been in the Hub for three days - Jack had locked all the exits when the reactor exploded, shaking his head as Gwen screamed that Rhys was still outside, and Ianto tried to reason with him, pointing out that dying was, perhaps, inevitable and they would be better served trying to minimize the damage. After all, by now the roads could have been somewhat repaired and government assistance sent. Jack had just said that the amount of radioactivity in the city meant rescue was unlikely, and wouldn't he have been contacted by now, and he was damned if someone else was going to die on his watch, and to stop shouting please, it was noisy enough with the Rift alarm going off every hour. When Gwen pulled her gun and threatened to shoot him and take the keys, he rolled his eyes and retreated into his bunker, somehow locking the trap door immovably. Without Tosh, it was useless to try and override the system - Ianto had competent skill with the computer systems, but he was up against decades of experience. Owen only knew enough to run the basic necessities, and had refused to even look at a monitor since they had been surprised by Tosh's video.

After being locked out of the system override for the ninth time, Ianto excused himself and withdrew to the kitchen - Gwen could hear something ceramic smashing against the wall. When she peered around the doorframe she was greeted by the sight of him slumped in a corner, his hands covering his face.

Easing back around the corner, she fled to the couch before he could notice her.

Owen was slumped against the autopsy table in the medical bay, books and thick sheaves of paper scattered throughout the entire area. He looked up at her when she leaned over the railing, eyes still bright against the ashen pallor of his face.

"Are you okay?" she asked quietly, flinching in anticipation of sarcasm.

Owen must have seen that she was fragile, or just too broken-down for his usual abrasiveness.

"No," he said, almost silently. "And I know you aren't either."

"Don't bring him up," she snapped. "I can't hear it right now."

"And not from me, right?" he almost laughed. "I never saw this coming, I have to say. Tosh gone, Jack hiding, Ianto tossing around his favorite teacups. You being the bitchy one in the wake of disaster. What happened to that comforting face we all got so used to?"

"Shut up, Owen."

She watched him as he looked back down at his papers, shoulders even more rounded than usual - like he was caving in. Looking at him was too painful - remembering the heat of his body against her, remembering the guilt that ate through her too late to have her running back to Rhys. There were too many reminders of death around her; Ianto breaking down under the strain and Owen moving under a supernatural power that couldn't help her now, couldn't bring Rhys back to her.

"Stop thinking so much," she heard from below her. Owen's pale face was upturned, staring at her with the same expression he'd had right before he'd shot Jack, back when things could be fixed.

"What else am I supposed to do? We're locked in here; if Ianto couldn't get us out, we sure as hell can't do it."

"Come down here, then," he said, not breaking eye contact. "If Jack's going to keep us trapped in here like his pets until we starve to death and he cannibalizes us, there's no point in me continuing to go over radiation treatments, is there?"

"You can't starve to death," Gwen pointed out, drifting towards the stairs, any suggestion of what to do with herself good enough to follow. "It'll just be the two of you; it's not like we're in Brecon Beacons anyway."

"Haunting Cardiff? I don't think so. I'll put him in the morgue before he can come onto me."

"And you?" Gwen said, heels hitting the tiled floor as she came down off the last step. "Should I put you in a drawer before you can keep going?"

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"I don't really care what you're doing," she said softly, arms around herself. "Just as long as I don't have to think for a little while."

* * *

Suddenly Owen was on top of her - suddenly, just like everything that seemed to happen lately (the continuous twilight daze of being locked in the Hub notwithstanding). His fingers on her wrists were the same chilled temperature as the tile beneath her back, making her feel like she was about to combust. The contrast between her memory of his hands, slick and overheated, and the current reality was overwhelming; his hands were trailing down her arms, the skin cool and dry, still supple, but not _right_.

He didn't even bother taking her shirt off, just shoved the cotton up until he could trace around the edges of her bra with his mouth. The little gasping noises coming from the back of her throat sounded like they belonged to someone else, someone who still had a husband and a life and a job, really.

His mouth wasn't the warm wet she remembered, but it didn't remind her of the hot chapped lips Rhys had, and that was good enough. When he unzipped her jeans and licked at her with his cold dry tongue, she twisted and moaned beneath him, just like all the times before, even though the pleasure resembled pain more than anything else. When he tried to pull his hands back down from her breasts she grabbed them, not certain she could take any more as it was.

After she came she noticed she was crying.

* * *

They stayed there for hours, slumped in the well of the autopsy bay, tears silently, steadily, rolling down her cheeks, listening to Ianto curse through the trapdoor at Jack. Waiting for something to happen.


End file.
